And hooray! The Artist Retreat here in just a few days is keeping me hopping!
I'll share the preparations, and then while the friends are here I know I won't be able to resist showing you peeks at the fun.Brenda, Susan, Barb, and Kristen will be here... we'll miss having Caroline, who is the absolute essence of Southern Belle (and by the way, she's having some juicy giveaways on her blog this week!)

We're planning lots of artsy goodness, bike trips, ferry rides and other Pacific Northwest adventures. I can hardly wait to share it with you!

Each of the artists will sketch away in a handmade book like this one.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Little beauties have sustained me recently through a series of misadventures.

When a routine crown at the dentist turns into a double root canal followed by a defective crown that needs to be drilled off but it goes wrong and your face turns black and blue and swollen...

you can find particular joy and comfort thinking about the happier things in life...

bees, for example...

and honey... a million shades of pink...

and lavendar and green...

... the smell of elderberry flowers and more bees!

Just as I was musing on that my friend Terri Conrad wrote a wonderful post on her blog. Click here to read it, and enter her drawing for some lovely gifts. Terri hasn't had a completely smooth path either, and she's using her art to make the world a better place.

Even now the first strawberry is almost ripe, and other good things await us all. There is joy just around the bend. Can you feel it?

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Today it's the first blue-sky, warm-outside, feeling-like-summer day! And everyone has come out to welcome it.

The agricultural workers were planting like mad and some of us were out in the garden weeding and singing. (Sun can do that to us Northwesterners, who are wholeheartedly sick of clouds and giddy at the warmth of today's sunshine!)

I will never tire of the ordinary sights in our little valley. Its simple beauty still astonishes me.

Steve's crops are up and growing and those of us who prize his farm stand are downright gleeful. There is nothing better than Steve's produce.

The raspberry canes have flowered and the fruit has set. It won't be long before our fingers and lips are stained red with happiness.

The potatoes are up and growing, too.

And I am growing as well~ growing in my artistic vision, ideas sprouting. There's an airbrush on its way to the studio and new sketches littering the studio.

What's growing in your home town? What creativity is sprouting between your ears?

Do tell! I would love to hear from you.

And by the way, did you notice you can now subscribe by email? If you are willing I would love for you to try it and let me know if the posts arrive nicely in your in box. I am questioning my technical skills over here!